This invention relates to tissue blocks having a plurality of different antigenically reactive tissues embedded therein, sections of such blocks, slides prepared from such sections, and the use of such slides in immunohistologic procedures.
In recent years, rapid progress in the application of immunohistochemical methods to histopathologic diagnosis has been stimulated by the advent of monoclonal antibodies. Present monoclonal antibody technology is inefficient, however, because it often yields many more useless monoclonal antibodies than useful ones. The screening of such antibodies to identify the clinically useful ones therein is laborious, time consuming and expensive.
Immunohistologic screening is practical only if a large number of tissues can be grouped within a small surface area, because only a limited amount of hybridoma supernatant is available in the early phase of monoclonal antibody generation when rapid colony selection decisions must be made. Recognized screening techniques usually employ slides, each containing only a single specimen. A single slide made according to the present invention may provide one hundred or more different tissue specimens and/or neoplasms, all of which can be simultaneously screened by application of a single drop of reagent such as a hybridoma supernatant. Because all of the tissue specimens are treated equally during immunostaining, most sources of variation are removed and comparative studies are facilitated. See, Battifora, H., "The Multitumor (Sausage) Tissue Block: Novel Method for Immunohistochemical Antibody Testing", Laboratory Investigation, 55:244 (1986).